Chapter Three – More About Alcoholism
The first step in recovery, the admission that we are alcoholics. “We learned that we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholics.”
Also, the admission that alcoholism is a progressive illness.
“Over any considerable period we get worse, never better.”
Sometimes we think that if we remain sober for awhile that later we can drink normally.
“If we are planning to stop drinking, there must be no reservation of any kind, nor any lurking notion that someday we will be immune to alcohol.”
To determine if one is an alcoholic let him or her stop for one year. “If he is a real alcoholic and very far advanced, there is scant chance of success.”
The crux of the problem is the mental states that precede a relapse into drinking.
“What sort of thinking dominates an alcoholic who repeats time after time the desperate experiment of the first drink?”
“He had much knowledge about himself as an alcoholic. Yet all reasons for not drinking were easily pushed aside in favor of the foolish idea that he could take whiskey if only he mixed it with milk!”
“Our sound reasoning failed to hold us in check.”
In some cases we get drunk, feeling totally justified by our being nervous, angry, worrying, being depressed, jealous or some other feeling.
Regardless, during this period there is little regard for the consequence of the drinking.
“But the actual or potential alcoholic, with hardly an exception, will be absolutely unable to stop drinking on the basis of self knowledge.”
Self-knowledge and will power will not work.
“They had said that though I did raise a defense, it would one day give way before some trivial reason for having a drink.”
“I saw that will power and self knowledge would not help in those strange mental blank spots.”
The answer is spiritual in nature, combined with a program of action.
“But the program of action, though entirely sensible, was pretty drastic. It meant I would have to throw several lifelong conceptions out of the window.”
The true defense against the first drink “must come from a Higher Power.”
